Keeping Sane During an Israeli Summer
For Israelis, traveling abroad equals a therapeutic exercise, leaving behind the habit of constantly listening to news casts and the burden of an ongoing existential stress.
In 2011, when hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets of Tel Aviv clamoring for “social justice,” a new record was set for the number of Israelis vacationing abroad. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, some 2.5 million Israelis flew abroad that year, more than a third of the entire population. Some of them flew abroad for vacation (or business trips) more than once. In total, 4.4 million departures were logged.
If we were to convert this to American terms, it would be tantamount to about 70 million Americans flying abroad in one year in some 150 million departures. These numbers are mind-boggling.
This migration of Israelis across the ocean usually hits its peak in August, when 800,000 to 1 million take a summer vacation abroad — a figure unparalleled anywhere in the world. Incidentally, the record of 2011, by all indications, is likely to be broken in 2013 — despite the situation or perhaps because of it.
Israelis gripe quite a bit about their country, coming up with myriad complaints, most of which are justified. There’s only one thing that Israelis pride themselves on more compared to the rest of the world: “When we go abroad,” they say, “we have the best time in the world.” That’s an old-hat Israeli joke meaning that the tougher the life in the Holy Land, the more flying abroad becomes a supreme delight. Rarely can you be let down.
